Watch: Another Talarico Clip Comes Back to Bite Him as He Characterizes Christians as ‘Causing Trouble’

At this point, I think it’s safe to say that James Talarico has gotten more unearned mileage out of “Presbyterian seminarian” than Al Sharpton has gotten out of “Reverend.”

OK, so Rev. Al has been around for quite a bit longer, and Talarico hasn’t inspired a race riot via anti-Semitic saber-rattling yet. But you actually do have to earn the title “reverend” somehow, whereas “Presbyterian seminarian” is vague enough to hide that Talarico’s clerical training is thin and, from all available evidence, dodgy. Sharpton also never managed to get himself elected to anything. Talarico hopes to become Texas’ first Democratic senator in over 30 years by riding his alleged piety to an upset victory over state Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The thing is, that piety disappears mighty quick when Talarico opens his mouth. He seems to believe that God is nonbinary. He apparently holds some regard for the heretical “gospel” of Thomas. He thinks that single-payer health care is somewhere in the Bible. He’s against the Ten Commandments being displayed in Texas classrooms, or classrooms anywhere.

So, what kind of Christianity does he believe in? One where Jesus Christ came to earth and became man, was crucified for our sins, and rose on the third day? Or one where it’s an organized vehicle for “causing trouble?”

Thankfully, we don’t have to ask, because he told us, and you’ll not be stunned to discover it’s not the former.

Speaking on a podcast in 2023, back when he was just a Texas legislator and not a senatorial nominee, he discussed his very woke church and the work it was doing out in the community.

That church itself bears some scrutiny — and, indeed, it’s already gotten plenty of it, including in these pages — but the relevant part is what he thinks the role of the church ought to be.

“Our church was really active in LGBTQ rights in the ’90s,” Talarico told the host.

“We caught some attention by letting an atheist join our church in the 2000s, and then in the 2010s, again stirred some controversy by housing an undocumented family — a mother and son who were close to being deported by ICE.

“And so again, the idea that Christianity is just another word for causing trouble,” he said. “And so that was the tradition that I was brought up in.”

Now, let me just be clear for starters: Christianity can, and at times should, cause trouble, particularly when it stands as a bulwark against a sinful society. But it isn’t just an excuse for any kind of trouble.

“Christianity” is not a word for painting graffiti on the side of the local Chipotle. “Christianity” is not an excuse for smuggling a few pounds of ecstasy through customs at Kennedy. “Christianity” is not a defense for filming a pornographic movie in the town square. There are definite limits to this, something a “Presbyterian seminarian” should know by looking in that book seminarians are supposed to be studying, the Bible.

Secondly, it’s impossible, farcical, and heretical to collapse Christianity down to “just another word for causing trouble.”

You’ve probably heard the most effective distillation of the tenets of the faith, the Apostle’s Creed. (“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary; He suffered under Pontius Pilate …”)  At no point in that creedal statement from antiquity do you hear “I believe that the word ‘Christianity’ is just another word for causing trouble.” In fact, you hear a lot that directly contradicts those words. Almost all of it, in fact!

Some “seminarian,” this Talarico fellow.

And finally, we must talk about the “trouble” he’s causing, because it’s directly anti-biblical.

“Our church was really active in LGBTQ rights in the ’90s.” Let’s even just forget about the Old Testament for second here and go to 1 Timothy 1:8-11: “Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.”

Yeah, they’re right up there with murderers and enslavers, even after Jesus came. Turns out that’s not just an Old Testament thing.

“We caught some attention by letting an atheist join our church in the 2000s.” Jesus’ own words, from John 3:16-18: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

“[A]nd then in the 2010s again stirred some controversy by housing an undocumented family.” Romans 13:1-3: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”

In other words, for James Talarico, Christianity is just another word for “I’m going to do whatever the heck I like and call it holy, Bible be damned.”

We all know why he’s playing the faith card. Part of it is because, for a Democrat to get elected in Texas, they can’t just be some sort of AOC clone. Part of it is that, in this particular cycle, Attorney General Paxton would normally be the choice of evangelicals but for what gets euphemistically lumped under the aegis of “character issues,” particularly his wife divorcing him on what she said were biblical grounds.

But this is the danger of getting caught up in the “character issues guy” vs. the “Presbyterian seminarian.”

At his hypothetical worst, Paxton is a Christian man who has fallen into sin on several very public occasions — like every man but one who has ever lived.

Talarico, meanwhile, is nothing but a woke ideological snake cloaking himself in the false garments of a religion he doesn’t seem to slightly comprehend, much less believe in. And, if he gets elected, he will do everything in his power to make life statutorily worse for every Christian in America, not to mention for most of the rest of the nation, as well.

All you need to do is compare a short clip of Talarico describing his version of the faith to Bible verses familiar to any man who pretends to have a claim to the cloth — Al Sharpton included — to figure out that this man views Christianity as a prop, albeit one that he has no idea how to use properly. If the media wasn’t covering for him, this sham would have been over the moment it started.

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